Re: Drat! (2) (Re: Todo list -- POP3 retriever)

[David Pickens <dsp rci rutgers edu>]

On Mon, 22 Nov 1999, Chris Gonnerman wrote:

> The only thing I can think of that would save my code is running calls
> to the launch_next_job() code in a separate thread; but that fails at
> avoiding threading altogether, which was my goal.  Contrary to popular
> belief, GNOME does NOT require threading (proved by the system I am on
> now, SuSE 5.2/Linux 2.0.35/libc5 with October GNOME on it).
> 
> Why try to avoid threading?  Because I am not the only poor sucker with a
> non-glibc system who doesn't want to screw with it (because it works).

This is upsetting in that I'd be the last person to want to produce a mail
client that large numbers of people couldn't use.  On the other hand,
allowing the user to specify the behavior at compile-time might be the
best solution.

I looked through the new CVS code last night, and balsa is looking better
and better.  Much of the code had changed from the last time I'd checked
it out, and it took a bit of work to convert my older code, but I have a
bare-bones threading patch working.  There are still 2-3 areas that I KNOW
of that are sources of potential conflict, and unfortunately I won't be
able to solve that until I introduce pipes and callbacks in the main
thread.  The good news is that this doesn't appear to be too difficult.
(Famous last words.)

I could distribute the current patch but it does occassionally crash
because of those known problems, and I'd rather wait until Weds night and
have something that's not quite so 'alpha.'  I have had some pretty good
success with the patch, however:  I managed to open and close mailboxes,
messages, reply windows, etc., while mail was being downloaded.  Believe
it or not, I even sent a message during the download, successfully.  (The
GUI locked for 15 secs while the messsage was sent, but the mail download
continued without problem.)

Other Issues:

On libmutt -- yes, I don't like it much either.  However, if anyone does
go in to 'update' the mutt code to something newer, please talk to me so I
can point out some changes I've made to the code (for pop3 download).  I
know that it's been modified, at least, by others to try to get it to
update the GUI during mail downloads, because I've had to go through and
remove these references to get threads to work.

On the total re-write.  If the evolution/gnome-mailer team is working on
an outlook clone, it might be better to start from 'the ground up' there.
I'm interested in contributing there once things slow down, and I know
people have raised the possibility that parts of balsa may be useful for
them (at least once we work with the GUI a bit), but it seems that part of
the impulse behind balsa now is to get something out in the meantime and
to provide a client for people who don't want a full outlook clone.

David